Whistler - Entry #9

Today I went up skiing up in the glacier.  It was amazing since it was super sunny and hot.  It was awesome and I had lots of fun riding with my friends.  Everyone at the glacier was pretty much stoked to be on there, chatted it up with lots of people.  I just wished it could of lasted longer.

Here are some pictures I put up of today.

Whis. Day ? - Entry #8

The last few days has been pretty uneventful since I have been mostly skiing during my break.  On Wednesday I worked up at the glacier for the first time and it was overall, okay.  The weather wasn't amazing since it was mainly cloudy and raining up at the glacier.  It was also really cold and due to my stupidity, I forgot to pack an extra hoodie or even gloves.  I started my station at the showcase TBar and managed to borrow gloves from a person. It was quiet nice but really busy for a crappy day.  Up at the glacier, there are more breaks due to the sun and the weather.  We took breaks every 2 hours or so.

I went skiing both thursday and friday.  On friday I met one of my fellow lifty friend skiing around and we decided to roll together.  It was fun and definitely waiting for tomorrow to go skiing as well.  Here are some pics i snapped of the glacier and my lunch on friday from the wizard grill! 50% of all grill food!

Whis. Day #10

So for the past few days I've been just working normally on my shifts schedule.  There isn't really much to talk about other than lift operations is one of the chillest jobs.  It's really relaxing just watching the beautiful mountain view while serving and greeting everybody that comes up on the lift.  Whether they are tourists or a local boarder, we all find something to quickly chat about.

 I started early at 7am and just shared a station at the bottom of solar with a girl named Naomi. 

 Monday was a pretty rainy day compared to Sunday (above photo)

 We just chatted and then helped the occasional camp skier and boarder load up on the lift.  Half way through the day was when it was really slow, barely anyone came down or up the lifts.  It was just really cold and we relaxed in the liftie hut.  Someone came at 11 to relieve us of our shift so we can have our breaks.  The person I met was really cool and he's been living in BC all his life.  He and I had quite a bit in common since we both were familiar with the freeskiing scene.  It was just a chatty day and Naomi and I got off at 5pm.

On Sunday, I woke up late due to an alarm clock failure on my phone.  I rushed to work and was told to go to the springs building.  I showed up and my manager (Matt) gave me a level 1 warning.  Knowing what I need to do next, I went out and bought an alarm clock that for sure wasn't going to fuck up on me.  Since the positions were pretty filled today, Matt told me I can take the day off and do whatever I want.  I decided to go up skiing in the glacier and see how it was.  I knew a girl that surfs Newschoolers was looking for someone to shred with and we actually met up on the glacier and rode together for the whole day.  She was working as a liftie for the winter and transferred over as a volunteer to get a free pass while working part time at a restaurant.  It got really rainy, cold and was nearly closing time. We headed down together to the locker rooms and got the bus back up to the staff housing.  She lived on the third floor while I was on the fourth, we agreed to ski again on thursday when I was off work so I'm looking forward to it.

Whis. Day - Past few days

So lots of things went down for the past few days. I'll just quickly high light them and explain anything important.

So firstly, I'll explain the bad news.  I got my bike stolen, yup, it was shitty knowing that people still go around and steal anything they can get their hands on.  I bought the bike on Thursday for $40 off someone on CL.  Brought it to the bike shop and got it rechained.  After I left it in a place unlocked with all the other ones for one night, it gets taken.  I should of known better than to leave it unlocked but thinking its only a crappy $40 bike made me think otherwise.  It's so difficult to realize something is so important until it's suddenly gone.  Now I have to walk around the village again or do the whitebike program when I really need it.

Anyways, here's all the other stuff that went well:

Thursday

Today was the outdoor training day.  Waking up and getting dressed at 7:30, I proceeded down to the Blackcomb lift to meet everyone.  It was raining just a bit that day so everything was wet.  We were divided into groups of eleven people and there I made a few friends, even some from Barrie ON!  Our first station was the emergency procedure where we learned what to do if someone was hanging off of the chairlift and needed to be rescued.  We did it under the Magic chair and our feet was soaked by the shrubs and tall grass.

Next we headed down to the Wizard chair and learned where everything is and how to work it.  We then headed up the lift just to see the same thing on the other side.  Pretty much the whole day was being taught the same thing, our whole group just talked a lot and everything went by pretty fast.  After lunch, we met up and our supervisor took us through the Whistler mountain chairs, first up the gondola, then to fitzsimmons and then back to both gondolas.  They ran through all the lifts, where everything was and pretty much the same instructions for all of them.

After all that, our group talked about this meet and greet at the Merlin's bar at 6pm.  Apparently it was going to be mostly lifties and then some ziptrek people at 10pm.  This other girl and I were both 18 and when we asked the Supervisors if we can go, they agreed allowed us to, it was pretty sick experience knowing that people are so chill here.  So we all got off work around 2pm, I picked up the bike and stuff and headed back.  Me and this other girl both lived in the residence so we got up together, had some drinks and headed down with other two to the bar.  Not much of the entire "new" lifties showed up, it was just pretty much us and about 5-7 new lifties.  Rest were old timers that worked here previous seasons.  We all had beer, chatted and good time all around.  I headed back around 10pm to go to bed and get ready for next day's dry run

Friday

Got down the blackcomb locker room at 7am.  Swiped in and we all were ready to go.  Everyone was stationed on blackcomb lifts and there was about 5-8 of us for each station.  We were basically just shadowing the lead hands and learning what to do. 

However there wasn't really anyone using the lift that day other than employees and skiiers that had special access to glacier.  My group was at the bottom of Solar coaster and we pretty much just set up the visitor fences and chilled.  Later we got word of a gravel truck coming in and we had to shovel and spread gravel.  Once the truck came in, it dumped loads and loads of gravel.  It took 8 of us nearly two to three hours to shovel all the gravel and place it properly. 

The whole work was tiring and we all wished to never do it again.  Near the end, some people from top of wizard came to help and made the job a bit easier on us.

We all headed down around 12:30pm and had lunch at Mcdonalds.  Came back to the merlin's bar to have our examination at 2:00pm.  It was necessary to get above 80% if we wanted to pass and be a liftie.  They allowed cheating too so we all copied answers and basically everyone passed the test hehe.

 Saturday

So today was an off-day for me since I start work tomorrow on sunday.  I went up at 11 to the glacier to ski.  It was nice but still quite foggy overall.  The park wasn't fully set up so there was a lot of features I couldn't hit.  I snuck into another camp's park and stayed there the whole time hehe.  It was a really fun day but they only opened for 3 hours for any public skiing.  Here are some pictures below that I've taken  on my phone:

Whistler Blackcomb - The Philosophy of leveraging through service.

Disclaimer: This article is mainly speculation from my point of view.

The ecstatic focus on service

  One of the many areas where Whistler Blackcomb excel is their management over a variety of departments.  One of the many features that drive their success as a world renowned vacation resort is their service oriented focus to sell.  A huge part of being a Whistler Blackcomb employee is the ability to adapt to what they call the Sales culture.  WB presses the focus on providing exceedingly amazing service to every customer and hammers that thought whenever possible.  Repetition is key and WB lectures extensively on the proper core values and service attitudes every employee must attain during work hours.

 The driving thesis is to sell through service, not through their products.  WB emphasizes the importance of long-term clienteles.  While WB also strives to market towards potential newcomers, more focus is being shifted onto creating an experience to bring repeat customers to the table.  How Whistler Blackcomb does this is right through their employees.  Almost every employee of WB will require a FSO (First seasons orientation) where they all go through the cycle of proper attitudes, behavior and etiquette.  Sales culture, as I previously mentioned before, is the engine to this ideology.  Sales culture utilizes the legitimate experiences and attitude of employees to further generate more sales and customer interaction.  From a general perspective, employees act like a stores sales rep without the knowledge or presumption of being a sales rep.  Plus, they even have a wider range of information than just a normal rep. Customers in todays world are generally well rational people that know sales rep are always confronted with their own conflict of interest.  Thus, customers have an easier time trusting and following through with tips by a WB employee being well versed in his set of Sales culture.  Comparing an usual self-interested sales rep to following a sales cultured employees' tips will often bring a more pleasant and positive experience.  Furthermore, the experience will drive a stronger trust between the customer and WB, portraying them to provide a more well-rounded service.  Customers eventually follow through with reciprocity leading to more purchases and loyalty.

  WB fully achieves this sales culture through a set of well-set criterion in recruitment and a variety of perks/benefits to subsidize it.  During the employment phase, potential candidates are assessed more on their familiarity and experience directly with Whistler.  Many of the technical aspects are considered an asset rather than direct qualifications.  Human Resources are especially looking for employees dedicated to Whistler and passionate for the physical-nature-human coalescence.  WB believes the self-interested individuals will naturally seek and educate themselves with various perspectives of Whistler, increasing their range of information that first-timers might also want to know about.  WB also wants to help employees achieve the goals of self-enhancement.  By providing many benefits such as ski pass and discounts, they are helping to unlock a variety of options for employees to learn where money is usually a factor.  The subsidized benefits works in synergy with employee personalities to further drive the successful ideals of Sales culture.

  Whistler Blackcomb has a motto that all customer-services follow by: Connect. Assist.  Exceed.  While employee engagement might drop off the chart for many companies, WB has kept a steady record in the Exceed stage.  Whistler Blackcomb employs the ingenious strategy of using well-shaped employees as the forefront to PR and Sales.  In turn, the positive feedback loop generates even more returns as well as brand preferences, making Whistler Blackcomb one of the most successful business in the recreational industry.

Whis. Day #4 - FSO Orientation

So today was my First Seasons Orientation.  I'm glad it was in The cabin because that is literally a 5 minute walk away from staff housing.  Nothing much really happened today; orientation only ran until 1pm.  It was two employee experience officers that ran us over core values and a lot of general stuff that we should apply to as an employee.  During this interview I reflected upon some of the things they emphasize and will put up a short essay later in this blog about what I thought was interesting.

Anyways, it was really boring orientation they talked a lot about the previous stuff I mentioned and then some stuff about safety, actions, and employee perks.  I got off at 1pm and headed back to residence.  I found out about the White Bike Program for employees that allowed staff to rent out bikes for free in a 24 hour period.  So I headed down to the Administrator building of Blackcomb and requested one.  However, the lady at the front counter rejected the request cause I didn't have my Staff pass with me (the pass we use that have our employee ID + use to access lifts).  Not wanting to argue with the lady, I decided to head down to Springs building to try also.  This time, it worked, I got my bike and as soon as I got on I realized something.  It's like a fixed gear bike where the brakes are back pedal. Hoho, Whistler is full of rolling hills so this was going to be tough.  Luckily my uncle has taught me a bit on how to ride these back-pedal brakes bike and it took me only half an hour to get use to stopping.

I grabbed lunch at Fat Tony's pizza and headed up to residence.  The journey up the winding roads were ridiculous and I find my self exasperated by the time I reached my building.  I rested for an hour and then decided to go hit the gym.  The first time I blogged about the gym, that was down at the village and costed me a whopping $13.  Not wanting to pay it this time, I decide to bike all the way to Meadows park sports centre and workout there for $5 instead.  Below's a map of distances:

Orange A: My place; Green: The Core gym; Red A: Meadows Park gym

 

As you can see here, things get a lot harder since I have to bike all the way to the Red A.  No matter, I decide to try it anyway and it was the best decision I've ever made.  I wasn't quite sure how to get there at first.  Trying to remember the steps taken on Google maps, I found myself lost right beside the Sea-to-sky highway.  I know all it took was to ride down the highway to get there but there was so many cars and really narrow bike lanes that I wanted to avoid it completely.  I wasn't able to find a decent trail so had to ride that out for a bit until I finally arrived at the place

 

 

 I went in, worked out and then bathed in the hot tub for a bit.  Everything was great and it was time to head back.  I asked the front desk on how to get back to Blackcomb without the highway and luckily, they had maps of local trails and pointed me in the right direction. This time the trek was much farther in terms of length but worth it so much more.  I will attach pictures below.  I got back home, ate and chatted a bit with my apartment mate.  End of a great day but I am pooped out.  I get tomorrow off so it's gonna be back to the gym.  I just can't wait for Saturday for glacier skiing to open!

Below are pictures of the nature valley trail:

 

Whis. Day #3 - Training/Orientation Day

Today was the first day of my orientation!  I was so excited to get started and woke up early to get ready everything.  Plan was to head down around 8:45am to Merlin's bar and start the training with all the lifties.

Had a nice breakfast of bacon and salad, packed my bags and trekked down the blackcomb mountain to Merlins.  There was about 20-25 new lifties all together.  Many of which switched from another department such as snow school, to lift operations.  There are still quite a few new first seasons but most of them arrived earlier in the season to work.  Everyone was dressed out in their uniform and only me and a few others were kinda left out in our casual clothes haha.  

So at 9:00am we were in Merlin's bar getting our basic training down.  We were handed our manual for lift operations and given a few sheets to sign.  Our manager, Mike, said today was pretty much an indoor day.  He went over a slideshow of some main things like safety procedures, day in a life of a lift host, duties and responsibilities etc.  Lots of stuff were generalized and not much specifics were talked about.  We then had a 10 minute session in which we would find another liftie that we've never met before and introduce ourselves to each other.  I met a guy named Max and he got his instructors for skiing (Level 1 & 2) during this season at Whistler.  He was originally from England and complained how crap the weather and environment was compared to here.  So after our little meet and greet, each pair had to one by one introduce each other to the whole group.  Lot's of interesting people with a variety of different skills and interests.

After that we took a lunch break for about an hour and a half or so.  I headed up the blackcomb mountain to the cabin to check in with employee experiences.  Since I couldn't of done this the first two days, I decided it'd be best to do this now and grab my uniform.  However, after I checked in, I was told that uniform pick up was actually at another building (Springs building) and that's a whole 'nother direction towards the Fitzsimmon gondola.  So figuring out I didn't have much time, I might as well just eat some lunch at home and head back down for rest of the training day.

So we got back and it seemed that during the break, the few others left to springs building to pickup their uniform so I was pretty much the one that stand out hehe.  So for the rest of the day, we watched some videos regarding employee attitudes, went over some more stuff about safety, procedures, how a lift works etc.  All very general but still taught a lot of things.  Mike concluded with tomorrows plan at The cabin, where we will have our FSO (First Season orientation).  There's a good chance many won't show up because it isn't required for people that already got their FSO to come do it again.  So after all that was over, I headed over to the Springs building to pick up my uniform.  They gave me a whole bunch of stuff.  In total I received:

• 2 Collared shirt (Green)
• Orange Jacket
• Black Whis. snowpants (really cool)
• Black glacier jacket
• 2 Shorts (black)
• A cap

I was told that  can keep everything except the snow pants, and two jackets.  Bummer but the summer uniforms are still pretty sweet.  After wards, I headed down to the library to take out a book and get a Whistler library card.  I checked out a book about personal finances and I'll probably be reading that for the next few weeks.  Things are shaping up to be fun soon,  Mike told us thursday will be our hands-on training so we get to interact with the lift soon and push some buttons.

Oh before I finish up, here's a photo of my room after fully setup.  I don't have a roommate yet so I get quite a lot of room.

 

Whis. Day #2

Woke up early and surfed the internet for a bit.  Found out about this sweet gym down in the village called  The core.  They had all sorts of fitness facilities such as rock climbing, weight-room, cardio room, etc.  Price was $13 a day so wasn't that bad but the Meadows park place down the road in Creekside was only $5, clearly a car would be a win-situation here.

As soon as I left for the gym,  shut my door and crap, left my card key in my room basically locking myself out.  So I headed over to HOUSE building and asked for temp key.  There, I found out that I needed to move out of my room to another one down the corridor due to my apartment originally requested an all-girls room.  I don't mind shifting rooms but the thought of moving all my stuff down the corridor and redoing the linen on the beds made me sigh.

Got down to the gym, worked out, found out about their crossfit room and had lots of fun in there.  Stayed in the gym and room for about two hours before heading out.  I went down to a TD canada trust brand to change a few things and mail out form regarding my investing accounts.  After that ordeal, had some KFC and headed back to move my stuff.

The new apartment was the same ordeal.  The two single rooms were taken and a girl just moved out of the shared so I can move in.  We talked and I found out she and her boyfriend lived here since September and she's moving back to Sweden tomorrow while her boyfriend will stay until his summer shift ends.

That's about it for now and apparently there will be a bit of meet tonight in the apartment, some drinking and get to knows.  Should be fun.  Shift starts tomorrow at 9:00 am so gotta get to bed early!

Whis. Day #1

So I just arrived at Whistler, BC before I start my summer long shift.  It was quite an interesting adventure and a really smooth transition from the busy streets of Vancouver to the quiet suburban town of Whistler.

Everything was well-planned ahead and the whole travel process was fast as ever!  I arrived in Vancouver around 9:30am just in time to catch the Pacific Coach Bus to Whistler.  The weather was sunny and the view on the Sea-To-Sky highway was fabulous.

After I arrived at the Gateway loop in Whistler village.  I took a cab from the loop up to the Staff housing.  Checked in and got a room in my apartment.  Turns out the apartment only had one other occupant and rest were empty.  Rest of the day went pretty quiet, unpacked my stuff and hiked down the Whistler village and bought groceries.  I went to a lot of stores asking about bikes since it would be the most efficient way to travel around Whistler.  Disappointed by the store rates, I hopped online and found some good deals on shitty, retail store bikes that people were selling used.  Got in touch with this lady that had a Norco Kokanee bike, about the right size for me but the bike needed rechaining.  

Contacted some stores and turns out rechaining will only be around 20-30$ max.  Perfect.

Now that I'm set for the next few days, I await eagerly for my first day as a Lift Host in training.